Bernie and Genii Prepare To Bid For Saab
GM tells potential investment duo to "show me the money"
The potential bid from Bernie Ecclestone and Luxembourg-based investment firm Genii to buy Saab from GM is reportedly in full progress. Swedish financial newspaper Dagens Industri reports that the would-be purchasers have been told that they need to prove to GM they have the cash to invest in Saab in the long-term.
Apparently, prospective investors have been told to deposit a demonstrative sum of between 500 million and one billion Swedish Kronor (£44m-£88m) into an account.
The sum has to be funded privately, to show that it doesn't rely on the European Investment Bank, and the investors must prove that they will be able to source the equivalent of £881m (10 billion Kronor) to invest in Saab's future.
GM's protectionism when it comes to selling Saab may seem like a prudent attempt to ensure that a respected motoring brand survives, but some commentators are suggesting that it seems more likely GM is attempting to prevent any lawsuits that might come from angry shareholders if Saab was sold to a weak party and subsequently folded.
According to the Swedish paper's sources, the bid from Spyker remains the strongest so far, though at this point GM hasn't declared that it is necessarily going to sell Saab to any of the prospective bidders.
The deadline for Bernie and Genii's ('Bernii'?) bid is reported to be 'early this week', so we should know the score soon enough.
I couldn't disagree more -- GM did a superb job of getting the worst out of SAAB, destroying it in the process. Hopefully they'll do the only decent thing left -- let someone else try to save it and bring it back to being the interesting and innovative company it was before GM got its "branding" hands on it.
Looks far more likely that the make will join Volvo as something owned by an emerging manufacturer. Hard to fit it in with any other 'names'.
Used to be (remember Polski Fiat) that Europe would flog its clapped out tooling, now it seems the whole company is on offer.
I couldn't disagree more -- GM did a superb job of getting the worst out of SAAB, destroying it in the process. Hopefully they'll do the only decent thing left -- let someone else try to save it and bring it back to being the interesting and innovative company it was before GM got its "branding" hands on it.
Bernie "the Famous Eccles"tone has something to do with F1, I think...
Coincidence?
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